Wimmer, H.
University of Salzburg, Austria
My contribution will examine the evidence for the position that the main hurdle for dyslexic children is to acquire self-reliant phonological word decoding in the early phase of learning to read and that this difficulty with phonological reading secondarily leads to deficient input to the visual orthographic word lexicon required for fast visual word recognition (and for correct spelling). In neurological terms, the primary phonological reading problem is attributed to a dysfunction of a left temporo-parietal brain region; the secondary orthographic deficit is seen as reflected in reduced engagement of a left ventral occipito-temporal region. In the examination of this account, imaging studies and meta-analyses from our lab will be presented and a revision of the theoretical account will be proposed.